It was a great show -- my first. I liked the pedestal layout because it gave each vendor, big and small, the same amount of space and the same shape. I found that even with the crowds, I still got the chance to visit most of the vendors I wanted to talk to.

I was impressed with almost everyone I spoke to -- the only exception was a pair who must have figured technology writers aren't their target market, so why waste their time? When I introduced myself as a writer for the magazine and asked what set their service apart they merely handed me a brochure, pointed to a short passage, and told me, "this summarizes it succinctly."

Oh well. I particularly enjoyed the polished pitch from the purple clad people of Nexidia -- no relation to Nexium, the purple pill. Atlanta-based Nexidia, like many companies in the speech analytics arena, began as a government contractor. This company's use of phonemes -- the individual sounds that make up words -- instead of an electronic dictionary to find patterns in unstructured data makes them unique.

Knova's Chris Pecce (that's pronounced "peh-chee") wants you to know that it's "nova," not "kuh-nova." Knova's service resolution management applications are in version 6.5 now, but word has it 7.0 is on the way. The company's browser-based knowledgebase works on both the agent side and the customer side.

Minneapolis-based Spanlink had a nice knowledgebase too, but this one's new. I got to see a demo of AnswerCenter's non-keyword searches. Spanlink also has a new Quality Management call and screen recording tool.

I asked representatives from IEX and Nice Systems about the merger, but neither group gave me anything juicy.

In my recent blog entry How to Deal with a Loud Call Center I talked about cubicle design. With this in mind I visited the Interior Concepts pedestal. Jennifer Way, marketing services coordinator, told me she'd had a lot of show visitors asking for help with noisy environments. Her advice: the right ceiling tiles and some noise-dampening cubicle walls can go a long way toward reducing noise.

One of the most interesting vendors had to be UNICOR, the federal prison system call center outsourcer. It's easy to joke about -- their sales guy Al Cuccinelli remarked that "agent adherence is fantastic" -- but the seventy year-old prison labor program sounds great on paper. Putting convicts to work keeps them busy and prepares them for gainful employment after their sentence. The program makes efforts not to compete with American workers for jobs, and personal information is usually handled by an IVR. Can this be a good thing? We'll be taking a closer look soon.

Finally, I was impressed with DocuSign, an electronic signature company. They've found call centers in the financial vertical are interested in their services. When you need more than an "I accept" box to seal a contract on the Internet, an electronic signature is a legal alternative to a handwritten one. DocuSign makes it very quick to assign an electronic signature -- a coded number sequence -- to any user. They say it's ideal for eliminating mail delays in over-the-phone financial deals -- an agent can walk the customer through the signing process online.

Were you at the show? What were your impressions? If you have any remarks, let us know.